Software for education, not babysitting

Education is one of the most important fronts for the advocacy of free
software. Free software is better philosophically for education,
because it acknowledges the freedom of students to do what they are
supposed to be doing -- learning and applying what they've learned.
Whereas proprietary software sets technical and legal restrictions
which limit how far kids can go in their learning, even calling them
criminals if they try too learn too much or get too creative, free
software encourages them to go as far as they want to go. Educational
environments are also critical because school is an important time of
life for acclimating people to software; it's one of the main places
where people are indoctrinated with proprietary software and the idea
that to use a computer is to use Microsoft Windows.

Despite the perfect fit between free software and education, it's
proved one of the hardest areas for our message to be heard. While
free software can be found in university computer science departments,
it is rarely found in non-specialist areas of education. Proprietary
software companies offer both students and schools discounts, or even
give it away at no charge. Many universities and even some high
schools are distributing laptops or other mobile computers to their
students now -- loaded with proprietary software. This means that we
won't succeed in promoting free software with weaker "open source"
arguments like price or convenience. We need to stress the free
software values of freedom, autonomy, and pedagogy.

We'll have to make arguments like Walter Bender of Sugar Labs made in
his inspirational talk at this year's Software Freedom Day event in
Boston. He stressed that education is action, and that kids learn best
by doing. Only free software enables this in the end -- proprietary
software can let kids drive different vehicles, but it won't ever let
them look under the hood. He described the culture of free software as
a culture of sharing and critique, and proprietary software as a
culture of babysitting.

Walter also announced the first success of a project that the FSF had
been discussing with Sugar Labs -- a fully free version of "Sugar on a
Stick." This is a bootable USB stick running the FSF-endorsed Trisquel
GNU/Linux distribution, which loads the Sugar learning
environment. Sugar has
been used in the One Laptop Per Child project, but using this USB
stick, it can run on other laptops and desktops as well. Because it
doesn't require installing any software on the computer, it's a great
way for people to demonstrate and introduce free software in schools.
I encourage you to give it a try -- the way it provides guided
creative activities while also exposing the workings of the activities
for people who want to tinker is an amazing model.

In addition to collaborations like this with other organizations, the
FSF has been building its own efforts in the area of education. During
the last year, we launched our new internship program, which has
already connected the FSF with several students at both the graduate
and undergraduate
levels. While we've had
interns helping out in the past, we've now formalized the process and
started to build ongoing relationships with universities. These
interns not only do great work at the FSF, but also return to their
schools better equipped to teach other people about free software.

One of our interns, Max Shinn, started the GNU Generation program, a
project to involve pre-university and high school students in free
software. GNU
Generation has attracted a great deal of interest and participation,
and its members have already made valuable contributions from the
local to the global, including starting free software groups at their
own schools and translating the Windows 7 Sins campaign site. Another
intern, Sarah Adelaida McIntire, helped build the LibrePlanet wiki at with over 2,000 edits containing information
about free software groups around the world. Niko Kern and Bernie
Innocenti have provided very valuable assistance to the FSF systems
administrators, supporting and improving the infrastructure the FSF
community and the GNU Project depend on.

It is incredibly encouraging to see such efforts for promoting free
software with young people and students gaining momentum and having
success. The FSF will be putting even more energy into them in the
coming year, as a critical step toward our goal of a creative, free
society. You can help by applying to our internship program to spend a
few months working closely with our staff and community on exciting
free software projects, or by telling students you know about the
opportunity. You can promote free software in your school or in your
community's schools, and share any letters or texts you may write as
part of that effort on LibrePlanet, for others to reuse. You can renew
your membership, or convince a friend to join, to expand the resources
we have to take on this work. Finally, you can let us know at
campaigns@fsf.org about the threats and impediments to free
software in your university or school, so we can take action. Together
we can make computers tools for learning, not babysitting.